Paper, board and tissue are made from pulp that includes cellulosic fibers originally processed from wood chips. These chips are process mechanically or chemically to liberate the fibers from the fiber/lignin structure. Liberated fibers are usually bleached and refined as a single slurry before being formed and dried on a paper machine to make reels of paper. Softwood and hardwood fibers are usually processed separately until final blending just before paper machine processing.
Cellulosic fibers are a natural biological material derived from trees. As a biological material there is great diversity in fiber quality within one tree, let alone regionally and among different species. Current state of the art paper fabrication systems generally assume this diversity is a constant when transforming fibers into paper with the exception of distinguishing between softwood and hardwood fibers. In order to accommodate this assumption, large operating safety margins are built into the paper making process. The assumption that all incoming fiber quality is constant limits the potential benefit of specific fibers in the overall distribution and also limits the flexibility of optimization within the overall process. For example, if one tries to improve sheet strength through refining then water removal will be adversely affected and vice versa. The ability to change paper properties independent of paper machine operation variables is restricted by the assumption that pulp is made up of fibers with constant quality.
The present invention aims to provide a new system for treating cellulosic fibers that improves upon the currently unresolved issues described above by allowing one to select out defined fiber distributions that can be independently processed and recombined to make a superior paper product at lower costs.